Team Interview – Game Design Director! Man on a mission

Jeff Mundee is a gaming lifer on a personal mission.

“One of my primary goals is around building a better game industry in New Brunswick and the Maritimes. For me, that means creating a stronger workforce of people locally (through teaching at the university), supporting indie developers, and working directly with Cold Furnace to build a AAA quality game,” said the company’s Game Design Lead and a university lecturer.

So when Cold Furnace Studios founders launched a Fredericton Game Developers group a couple years ago, Jeff saw an opportunity right away.

“These are the guys doing the work to create a community of developers and a AAA game. Working here (Cold Furnace) supports both my career and life goals.”

Jeff is a veteran of over 10 years in the game industry. Jeff started tinkering with game design and development in high school, using QBasic. His career in games took off in Vancouver with Factory1 Games and other independent game projects, where he became well practiced in game design and environment modeling. He then worked with Electronic Arts for three years as a motion capture specialist, where he helped develop popular EA titles. Notable highlights include: Fight Night, FIFA, Dragon Age, Skate, Dead Space and Need For Speed. Jeff then became a mission designer at United Front Games, working on an Activision game that was later published by Square Enix as Sleeping Dogs. At the same time, he dedicated his efforts towards helping a number of indie, mobile, and gamification projects, as well as teaching game design courses at the college level.

As part of their course work, his students at the University of New Brunswick must create a functioning game that meets certain criteria. “It’s about building up students who really know their stuff on a practical level.”

When he’s not building, playing, or teaching games, Jeff enjoys all-season camping. Yes, that includes camping in the frigid New Brunswick winters.

“When I was a kid, I was given two awards for winter survival. I enjoy biking, and the outdoors and all that. Winter camping is pretty cool.”